Canada: Man Dies After Facing Long Wait Time, Broken IV, and Being Handed to Interns

A Nova Scotia man with terminal pancreatic cancer who wasn’t seen by doctors until six hours after he was transferred to the Halifax Infirmary died a painful death days later after multiple problems with his care, and now his widow has forced the system to make changes.

According to CTV News, 68-year-old Jack Webb was transferred to the Infirmary from a suburban Canadian emergency room, and was supposed to have been seen immediately upon arrival by an internal medical specialist.

That didn’t happen.

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“Instead, nobody was waiting and he lay shivering in a crowded emergency room hallway lineup with his paramedics,” CTV reported.

During his five-day stay in the Halifax Infirmary, the city’s largest hospital, Webb was faced with a litany of indignities.

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He waited six hours in a chilly hallway. He was repeatedly pressured to give a do-not-resuscitate order by hospital staff.

He was bumped from his room by another patient, also dying. A broken IV that couldn’t pump fluid was given to him. Nobody told him just how long he had to live.

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On his last day alive, according to CBC News, his wife Kim D’Arcy heard the staff yell something after he was in a recovery room following a scope test: “If he stops breathing, don’t resuscitate.”

The hospital has made several changes since the details of Webb’s death emerged in April. On July 1, incoming patients must be met by a doctor within two hours of arriving in the emergency room. In addition, doctors will be coached on being more upfront with dying patients about their diagnosis.

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However, as CTV points out, “the underlying issues of crowded ERs and proposed solutions have been raised for years before Webb’s case highlighted the problems.”

It was also revealed that “(t)he Infirmary was in the midst of daily special alerts known as ‘code census’ where the ER declares it’s overcrowded and sends patients into regular wards that may already be struggling to cope.”

Perhaps most disturbingly, when Webb was first given his diagnosis in mid-January, the option of palliative care — keeping the patient comfortable until death in the case of a terminal illness — was never discussed with him. For someone with advanced pancreatic cancer, this would have been one of the likeliest treatment options.

This is the face of the Canadian health care system, ladies and gentlemen. This is the face of “free health care.” Overcrowded hospitals. Patients left alone in a shivering-cold ER without seeing a doctor for six hours. Non-working IVs.